In the
world of fashion models, they say one can never be too thin. In the
realm of high-end audio, it seems one can never get enough body mass.
Some audiophiles like their images taut; others have a preference for a
big, zoftig shape with a little bit of chub and shimmy. I'm sure
someone, somewhere, has a taste for outright flaccidity, but this
extreme I've yet to encounter. The super-model thin presentation is
occasionally encountered, but less and less these days. (In the past,
I've even been the proprietor of such. In my case, it was due to the
single-minded pursuit of refinement. I've seen it also result from the
blind quest for detail and imaging, to the detriment of everything
else.) These profiles come and go out of style seemingly on a multi-year
cycle. Right now the buzz from the grapevine tells me we're moving away
from a lean period of resolution-Resolution-RESOLUTION, and towards more
flesh and tone. Nowadays I shun the etched outline of an emaciated,
cutout string section with all heads accounted for.

Mind
you, all of this has little to do with reality. Lord knows you won't
find anything analogous to audiophile imaging or fulsome body in
Carnegie Hall. But as audiophiles, we must have our 3-D soundstaging and
pinpoint imaging. We want to perceive our objects of affection as solid,
tangible bodies of decent size, something you can point to and grab hold
of, so to speak. Their exaggerated presence in our living room helps to
develop the illusion we crave.

Cables
have profiles, too

The 0.8
signal wires from TARA Labs image with an almost perfectly cylindrical
form.

Up and
down the frequency spectrum, they are uncommonly consistent in their
energy distribution and in the shape frequencies assume. Equal
allotments of flesh are doled out, playing favorites only when it comes
to the mid-bass, which becomes outsized by strong signals down there.
This is a cable that goes to the gym—nothing is fat. So right away I can
safely say if you're the one who digs a zoftig mass or has a yen
for the anorexic, these are not for you. In this regard, the 0.8 comes
closer than most to the fabled linearity of the
measurement/objectivist-oriented school. There's much to recommend in
this even-handed profile. But I'm getting ahead of myself. First things
first: let's talk about their treble.

Whether
accomplished through the space-age Ceralex noise absorption compound
contained within the cables' ISM OnBoard module, the locking ground pins
which creates a common, floating ground, or by some other means, the 0.8
treble has just enough visibility—I mean audibility—and extension to be
satisfying, and no more. The treble integrates completely and appears no
different than any other frequency in terms of fleshiness, texture, its
surface on the soundstage, its tonal quality. (My faux pas in
confusing these two senses was intentional. It never ceases to amaze me
how the intense, purely auditory stimulation from good two-channel
stereo is sufficient to trigger involuntary eye tracking movements, to
trick the mind into thinking there's something lurking out there,
just left of center, midway back, and the origin of the sound is large
(or small), and has such and such a shape.)

Moving
on to the midrange, it is present, otherwise there'd be a suckout, but
there's not much else to remark upon, nothing that calls attention to
itself. (This sounds rather like the depiction of the treble, no?) And
that's the idea—you shouldn't notice individual frequencies.

It is
the 0.8's bass that calls attention to itself. While it shares all of
the qualities of the other bands, it is present in prodigious quantity.
You will find it tight, rounded, fulsome, and noticeable, tending more
to the plummy and smooth side, rather than the textured and faceted. For
an outsized low-end like this there's no indication of the timing issues
often encountered. Wires with this profile tend to start late and end
late, putting a drag anchor on the beat and slowing things down. In
addition to affecting PRAT, usually these cables' low-end is what you
hear last, and this imparts a heaviness, or ponderous aspect. A cable
with a coherent finish avoids the drag anchor. The 0.8 carries carries
its low-end well: led by the bass, it has outstanding drive and forward
momentum. Thinking about its energy distribution graphically, it is the
reverse of your typical high-end cable: the top images just like the
midrange, which is like the bass, except in heavy passages, when there's
more down below. This is a moderately warmish, full-bodied cable, with a
rounded, smooth and soft surface that is more egalitarian in its
treatment of frequency bands than most.

the
Secret Noise Reduction Ingredient: Ceralex

It was
obvious there was some form of noise reduction going on. The 0.8 series
interconnect and digital cable utilize a newfangled, proprietary noise
absorption material developed by TARA Labs called Ceralex. Ceralex is a
tuned, bandwidth controlled and absorption limited form of
ceramic/metallic oxide—it absorbs noise and dissipates RF/EMI. It is
sintered like clay, and looks like clay, and shaped into sleeves. These
are fitted within the ISM OnBoard modules. In principle, Ceralex is
similar to the popular ferrite cores that we clamp onto power cords. In
practice, ferrite is nasty and crude—the sledgehammer approach—affecting
a wide frequency range, even messing with the higher, audible, part of
the spectrum. And no two ferrite cores absorb identically. Ceralex stays
far outside the audible band and is carefully tuned for specific usages.

Products that advertise noise reduction often have unwanted side
effects, performing a form of sonic highway robbery. They rob Peter,
giving you less low-level detail, less texture and less bloom, to pay
Paul, removing glare and brittleness and artifacts. Their effects are
largely subtractive. Was the 0.8 guilty of this?

It
seemed like the same level of information was coming through. The 0.8 is
as good a detail sniffer as any of my refs—if anything, better. But
there was less texture, the lack most evident in the soft-edge of
transients. Coherency was excellent: from silence, there was instantly
sound, and it arrives en mass, without lagging frequencies and
without the sliding dynamic ramp-up of some cables. But the texture that
should have been present in the leading edge was covered over by an
overall smoothness. Consequently, it had a blunt edge and some loss of
nuance. The sustain part of the note followed suit, and gave no inkling
of the little "sound-pixels" texture I sometimes hear with selected
gear, and always in real life. I felt the decay to be quite true to the
source—sometimes it was noticeable, sometimes not, depending on the
program. Note that the smoothness was not partial to one band or
another, and was applied equally across frequency bandwidth. There was a
payoff to this, though: The 0.8 will never, ever sound brittle or edgy.
(Keep in mind this criticism is relative to the best performance I've
heard in other Class A cables.)

Body &
Bloom: the Kubala-Sosna Emotion and The 0.8

There
is a difference between body and bloom. My reference Kubala-Sosna
Emotion cable (which doesn't incorporate noise reduction technology) has
bloom. The K-S has more activity, more things to hear, in a harmonic
aura surrounding the fundamental note, especially in the lower mids down
through upper bass. You will unmistakably hear a piano's resonant,
wooden cavity, or the vibrating air in a violin's hollow body. These
complex overtones are put on display for your aural enjoyment.

TARA
Labs' The 0.8 plays down the separate display of harmonics. Imagine a
large sound image on the 0.8s stage. If you inspect it from edge to
center-of-note to opposite edge, you will find it amazingly
homogeneous—a firm chunk of sound. The image is a concentrated solid of
thoroughly integrated overtones and fundamental: it's not comprised of
variegated tonal parts, with the edge different from the center. Mind
you, the harmonics are all there, just wrapped together and blended. The
bloom, or aura, around instruments evaporates. Comparatively, the
piano's case resonances are lacking or, put another way, you don't
notice the case resonances. With the K-S, you do. So, how do you like
your coffee?

an Active
Soundstage

What
else is missing is noise. If all other things are kept constant, when
you lower the noise floor you get a big boost in signal to noise ratio.
And notice that there is a degree of spotlighting going on, nothing too
bothersome, but it's worth mentioning here. Roll these ingredients
together—along with the cables' excellent dynamics—and you get wham-bam,
pop-out imaging and animation, which gives the impression of an active
stage, of more layering, more 3-D. (I'm not so sure if it's really any
more: when I hone in on this aspect, it actually seems a bit flatter
than my refs.) But it definitely commands your attention. Depth is about
equal to my references—the width is what you notice. The entire lateral
span is occupied by borderless, large images, which pop onto the stage
from out of nowhere.

The
Ceralex does a very good job, but curiously, its compromises were more
noticeable with digital source. When I flip over to analog the
smoothness was hardly bothersome.

A lot
of the surface noise from LPs disappears—the analog noise floor becomes
almost as low as with CD. This is something new. (I have to give equal
credit here to the TARA IDAT line conditioner. With every other power
conditioner I've tried I could not escape occasional AC surges coming
through the highly sensitive phono stage. The IDAT is the first that
completely cancels out the very loud pops caused by appliances turning
on.) Can it be that the texture is missing from digital because it is
interpreted as noise by the Ceralex, and hence swallowed up?

Let's
put on Geri Allen's rendition of Lush Life (The Life of a Song,
Telarc CD-83598, with Dave Holland, bass and Jack DeJohnette, drums).
My, oh my, the piano has morphed incredibly from where we started out.
There's no doubt it's a Steinway Grand, a huge, resonating physical
object: judging from its dimension on the soundstage, it's probably the
largest the Astoria, Queens factory ever produced.

When
the drums and bass come in, there's lots of separation and space between
them, even though they are also large (the spotlighting accounts for
this). I'm noticing some quiet notes from the double bass I hadn't heard
before, and I'm struck by its power (although it still has more flesh
and punch than texture—there's that smooth surface again). It has thrust
and prominence, and is a little warmer, rounder, but far from loose. The
high-hat presents a potpourri of events, made evident by heightened
micro-dynamics and tonal variations. Following crisp transients, there
are wonderful waves of resonance rippling off the ride cymbal. All of
these have more flesh on them. These characteristics—warmth, fleshiness
and the integration of the treble—help keep the cable from sounding
analytic.

You get
the impression it has lots of control, it's placing sounds around the
stage, and managing them. The overflowing basket of audiophile goodies
in the 0.8 are targeted squarely at mainstream audiophile tastes and are
just what John Q. Public is looking for. You'll laugh, but this had me
concerned at first. With the 0.8, my sound began to resemble "the Big
Systems" at audiophile shows. I wasn't sure I liked this, at first.

the Sum is
Greater than the Parts

The 0.8
digital cable arrived first and I listened to it for a week or two
A/B'ing with a couple of others. I never came to an unequivocal
conclusion—sometimes it seemed to exceed the strengths of one or another
of my refs, sometimes it came out the lesser. The personality of a
single piece of The 0.8 seemed ephemeral. This back and forth persisted
until a bunch more came in, and I was able to dress three-quarters of
the digital signal path with The 0.8—then the results were unambiguous.

The
same happened with The 0.8 on the analog side. Analog playback was
suffering. It was transparent, but too thin. It needed more solidity and
weight to ground it—just the things I thought a 0.8 interconnect between
the phono stage and the line stage would be good for (there were no TARA
wires on the analog at this time). I connected one—and was deflated: it
was worse than before.

Be
careful not to judge ambience and the "recreation of the recording
venue" based on a single length of The 0.8. Where one or two pieces of
The 0.8 wires (or TARA AC products) have the effect of vacuuming up the
air and the sound of the hall, a full complement puts it back
again—decay is then fully realized.

The
moral of this story is: don't audition a single run. You need a couple
of pieces to hear what its capabilities. With The 0.8, the more the
merrier.

Design &
Construction

Fit-n-finish are in line with the high pricing. The interconnect has a
black mesh overlaying silver outer jacket, with black terminations and
black ISM OnBoard modules—a black-tie affair, in more ways than color
scheme alone. The quality and neatness of the finish also suggest a kind
of no-frills formality. (The 0.8 digital IC has navy blue over silver
dielectric.) They look normal—aside from the black aluminum ISM module.
These are about 5" long and 1 ½" in diameter, located near the source
end, and account for the concentration of weight. The interconnect
itself is of average diameter, light and flexible, easy stuff to use.
Inside, there's a single positive and negative (and neutral for XLR)
Rectangular Solid Core Gen 2 conductor riding on the edges of a Teflon
air-tube. Ninety-eight percent of this air-tube is empty space—an air
dielectric. The outside of the tube is covered by a PTFE dielectric and
an anti-corrosion-coated shield. All conductors and the shield are
SA-OF8N copper. (The Super Annealed™, Oxygen-Free Eight Nines process
creates one long, unbroken single crystal, or mono-crystal, structure.
All TARA Labs wires use this metal.) It does look normal—except for the
skinny 8" ground leads coming out of the source end. These terminate in
mating mini-banana plugs to create a floating ground. The black,
anodized aluminum locking RCAs are newly designed for ease of use. The
balanced cable has black XLRs and made secure connections.

The
speaker cable has two runs per channel—positive and negative are kept
separate—and each run looks about the size of Purist Audio Colossus,
maybe a little bulkier. These are thick, heavy and black. Heavy-duty
spades screw into a metal termination casing, easily interchangeable
with screw-in bananas. Each run has three bundles of 36 RSC conductors
around a Teflon tube, no shield and no Ceralex. Do the math: each of the
bundles is equivalent to 24-gauge; multiply that by three; then double
it. The 0.8 speaker wire totals slightly greater than 4 AWG.

The
purpose of the Isolated Shield Matrix™ OnBoard capsule on the IC and
digital cable is to house a Ceralex sleeve, spacing it at a distance
from the conductors. If it were right on the conductors the effect would
be too powerful and damaging. Further, adjusting the gap between
conductors and Ceralex is useful for tuning the sound: the same
conductor wire will sound darker with an ISM OnBoard capsule than if the
Ceralex were housed in an external box. Only the shield braid is in
proximity to the Ceralex…

the Three
Lives of The 0.8 IC

…which
segues beautifully into a discussion of the three versions of The 0.8
IC.

First,
there's The 0.8 with ISM OnBoard. This has pigtail leads from the
cables' shield at the source end to create what's commonly called a
floating ground. This is the version used for all of my testing above.

Second
is The 0.8 with ISM Outboard, utilizing a "Chassis Ground Station" at
the source end. The Chassis Ground Station is a small, black aluminum
block into which the mini-banana pigtails from each interconnects'
ground are connected. So far, it's the same as above, but then another
lead from the CGS is tied to a components' ground post (ideally a preamp
or other component with lower electrical potential). At the load end
another set of male and female ground leads connect. This gives you a
floating shield at BOTH ends, but with a difference. Because all of
these pigtails only connect to the cables' shield and the shield does
not touch the negative conductor, you have the much-wanted
"star-grounding" configuration. (Most implementations of floating ground
have the shield touching the negative conductor, and the external
grounding touching the shield—not a true floating ground.) The 0.8 with
Chassis Ground Station has the same MSRP as with ISM OnBoard.

Inserting one length of this version took me back a step. Certainly, the
treble was allowed free reign and my issues with the soft transient and
texture evaporated. But the missing Ceralex was audible in
(comparatively) high noise levels. The sound was like many other good,
"accurate" cables on the market.

Third
is the last word in performance; The 0.8 with the brand-new and improved
ISM HFX FGS (Floating Ground Station). This Cadillac of a ground station
is beyond even the one supplied with the current top-of-the-line Zero
IC. Ground leads at the source end plug into the ISM HFX FGS, a
beautifully constructed, even luxurious, external ground station
containing a revised Ceralex compound. A single lead from the ISM HFX
FGS box connects to the preamp or other ground source with lower
electrical potential. At the load end male and female ground leads
connect together, as with version two above. The shield is truly
floating at both ends, effectively star-grounding the cable. And the
Ceralex is remotely absorbing RF/EMI from the cables' shield.

Replace
the length of number two with this third type and you get to hear the
violin's tremolo instead of a bunch of cats scratching on the roof. If
your system doesn't need all the weight of the ISM OnBoard, a length of
The 0.8 with ISM HFX FGS will give you treble extension without the
noise and a snappier transient with realistic edge. The ISM HFX FGS
upgrade will set you back an additional $800.

TARA
CCI digital vs. The 0.8 w/ ISM OnBoard.

Granted, the price tag is not for the faint of heart. Then consider that
The 0.8 is presently two rungs down from TARA's top-of-the-line IC, The
Zero. Whew! Give me some oxygen. What does it sound like at the top?

With
one length of the TARA Zero CCI digital wire in place (their top-rung
digital cable, the equivalent of The Zero, except with RCA termination,
$3,800/meter), that little bit of artificiality in The 0.8's transient,
the soft, too-smooth edge, which ultimately felt blunted, is gone.
Instruments come and go oh-so-naturally now, with nothing suggesting
less than perfect articulation. (In my experience, almost no cable is
capable of reproducing rapid instrumental articulation, but the CCI gets
it.) Additional layers of musical information come through; in
comparison, the 0.8 seems congested. Texture, timbre, body and detail
all combine to up the realism ante, and resemblance to mechanical
processes is pushed far from your consciousness. The bass has firmed up,
although it's not as powerful sounding as The 0.8, so there's less slam;
the CCI is tonally lighter; and staging extends to the extreme
horizontally. These differences between the CCI and The 0.8 will be
modest in most systems. I can even see The 0.8 preferred in some because
it addresses weak bass and strident treble. But in a top-rank rig, the
CCIs' rarified contribution became more important. Very few cables get
to the level of The 0.8—then the CCI leapfrogs it, and puts you on
another playing field.

An
Important Sidebar about Cable Burn-In

Matthew
Bond told me his cables burn-in very fast, in a matter of hours, because
there's very little plastic or dielectric around the conductors. Huh?
What does plastic around the conductors have to do with burn-in? Every
discussion on the topic I've come across mentioned something changing in
the structure of the metal—curing it, healing it, etc. I was puzzled.
After extended back and forth with Matthew, he sent this example, which
made the case for me:

Make up
a pair of bare-naked interconnects, just plain solid core copper wire
attached to RCA plugs. Listen to it today and listen to it tomorrow.
You'll hear the same thing. (Certainly within some weeks or months the
copper will oxidize and this will affect the sound slightly, but not
before you have determined that there has been no change in the sound in
the first few days and weeks.)

Now,
make up a second pair of interconnects, but this time use wire with any
plastic insulation and you will put the "burn-in" question to rest.
Using insulated conductors is when you notice changes within hours and
days. There is an audible change when plastics are used to insulate the
copper conductors.

Definition of Burn-In: The phenomenon of a cable's sound changing over
time as the electrostatic field in a cable slowly stabilizes the
insulation materials (dielectrics) around and between the conductors.

The 0.8
cables' break-in occurs in stages. Initially the cable is dark, dynamic
and powerful, but a bit dull. Within a couple of hours, you'll notice it
begin to open up. After 24 hours the last of the veiling disappears.

Conclusion

Major
cable manufacturers usually have a "house sound." In the case of TARA
Labs, that sound is VERY EASY TO LISTEN TO. They get the main business
accomplished, clearly and unambiguously, with less BS editorializing
than most.

With
The 0.8 ISM OnBoard series, I hear a boatload of the things Joe
Audiophile, who lives at Main Street and Solid-State Avenue, is looking
for. Among them are its splendid tonal balance and equanimity regarding
frequencies. The 0.8 has an unusually flat frequency response, except
for an extra dollop in the bottom end, which I rather like. Images tend
to be on the large side, with a small degree of spotlighting. They have
a lot in common with the
TARA Labs power products. Apart from the sound, which is slightly
warm, weighty and full-bodied, these product lines both share conductor
metal (six-nines copper), topology, dielectrics and strategic use of
Ceralex noise absorption compound.

Their
noise reduction technology is real—you'll hear how quiet it becomes—and
it is done less obtrusively than most products that advertise this
feature. No information is lost. The compromise extracted is in the form
of a bit too much smoothness, with a trickle-down sacrifice of some
texture and bloom. If you're searching for more bloom, don't look here.
The smoothness does have a side benefit though: the total absence of
transient harshness or stridency. In fact, you'll be hard pressed to
make them sound edgy, thin or brittle. The noise reduction, the
spotlighting and the great dynamics add up to frequent involuntary "WOW"
reactions.

If
you're a fan of Shunyata, Wireworld or Cardas cables (among the most
popular of the full-bodied, "accurate" wires), you'll have a natural
affinity with the TARA Labs The 0.8. Personally, I like The 0.8 better
than these brands because it passes more information and is more
musical. When you put The 0.8 into your system, most likely you won't
have to spend time re-voicing it—it will just sound better. And chances
are it may also start to remind you of those "big rooms" at Hifi shows.
Just make sure your audition includes several pieces—one length is
liable to give equivocal results.

On
balance, the surplus of audiophile goodies supplied by TARA Labs' The
0.8 series cables far outstrips its minor shortfalls. In my opinion,
this cable rockets into Premier Class.